GoDaddy keynote at NamesCon — News from
Here’s what Paul Nicks disclosed at NamesCon today.
GoDaddy (NYSE: GDDY) President of Domains Paul Nicks gave the opening keynote at NamesCon today.
Nicks made an notice sure to please domain owners: in the future, you’ll be able to see domain search data for your domains. This will let domain owners know how many times someone searched the exact match for their domains.
This data would be a huge value add. Imagine knowing how many times someone searched for each of your domains at GoDaddy and other registrars in the Afternic network, which sees 41 million combined domain searches a month. 90% of all GoDaddy Aftermarket sales are from exact match searches.
This data would help you understand demand for your domains and which domains to renew.
Right now, GoDaddy clients are able to see how many Whois searches there are for their domains. This data has always been susceptible to bot traffic, and few people search Whois now that contact information in Whois is obscured.
Domain investors can also look forward to an improved app that lets them manage their domains on the go. Right now, the domain investor app is only used for domain auctions.
In other product news, Nicks stated that GoDaddy plans to make access to Domain Academy included in the Domain Discount Club.
Nicks also provided examples of how the firm is testing landing page designs. Based on feedback from the Dan.com team, which GoDaddy purchased this year, the firm made a change to the colors of a buy now lander. In testing, this resulted in a whopping 43.5% increase in the number of people clicking the Buy Now button on the domains.
Not all tests work out the way you’d hypothesize. A test of a less-cluttered version of GoDaddy’s purchase inquiry lander resulted in a 23% drop in conversions. (Note that GoDaddy runs these tests on its own domains, not client domains.)
GoDaddy is also testing a pricing change I suggested in March: changing the ending price of domains from ,999 to ,111. For example, instead of pricing a domain $1,999, it would be priced $2,111. Nicks stated the data is not statistically significant yet, but early testing shows a 10% increase in sales revenue from this change. Some of this is from the increased price but conversions are increasing, too.
On the domain financing front, Nicks stated that adding Buy Now Pay Later service Klarna to aftermarket domains has not boosted sales. The firm is working to implement longer-term payment plans that Dan offers.
One more statistic worth sharing: 1.5 million expired domains are flowing through GoDaddy Auctions every month.
